Knowledge of the Universe

I love the show The Universe. It does a great job making the latest knowledge about our universe accessible to common-folk in. I caught this episode one night as I was fighting off a coma from lack of sleep.

I was struck by how human's knowledge of the universe "transcends and includes". We discover something new and the next person uses that knowledge as a platform to jump to the next level of understanding. Exactly what Integral Theory sees as "evolution".

I also noticed how the different conclusions correlate with stages of awareness. From pre-rational to rational to trans-rational. From premodern to modern to postmodern. From egocentric to ethnocentric to worldcentric. As human's develop, the universe appears to keep getting bigger. Perhaps co-created?

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the history of our knowledge of the universe....

The Spiraling Jesus

So, lets say that you were contemplating your favorite spiritual text, and you decide to close your eyes. You experience a phenomenon of inner light and a feeling of universal love. (This is a state of consciousness as opposed to a stage.) Or, lets say you were hiking through the mountains and at the edge of the highest cliff you see a majestic snow capped mountain with green fields below and you feel "oneness and peace" with the awesome beauty before you.You have experienced a state of reality that is not part of your normal waking life. What do you do with it? How do you interpret this experience? What influences your interpretation? All of the major religions deal with this phenomenon and each may interpret this experience differently. Additionally, you will interpret your experience according the STAGE of development you gravitate towards. (Here is a link for the Stages of Awareness.)

So, lets also say that the person has a "we" that is Western Christianity that provides the context for interpretation. The chances are this person will describe this phenomenon as an experience with the Jesus and/or the Holy Spirit. This experience can occur at any stage, but will be interpreted within the "limiting principles" of that stage.

Here is an example from Ken Wilber's "Integral Spirituality":

Magic Stage - Jesus is experienced as a personal savior who can miraculously alter the world in order to satisy my desire and whim: Jesus as Magician, turning water into wine, multiplying loaves and fishes, walking on water (Jesus may or may not have actually walked on water, but at this stage, this is the thing that would matter most to me). This stage is preconventional and egocentric, so Jesus only cares about me.

Mythic Stage - The same kind of subtle-state experience might be interpreted as communion with Jesus the Eternal Truth bringer. This stage is absolutistic in its beliefs, so you will either believe the Word exactly as written, or you will burn in hell forever. This stage is also ethnocentric, so only those who believe in Jesus Christ as their personal savior can be saved.

Mental/Rational Stage - Jesus Christ becomes a humanized figure, still fully divine and fully human, but now fully human in a more believable way, as teacher of the universal love of a Deistic God (who has read Principia Mathmatica and knows where to draw the line). Because this stage is the beginning of the postconventional and worldcentric stages, this is also the first stage of development that can find salvation through Christ Jesus but also allow that others might find equal salvation through a different path. You will moving in Vatican II fashion.

Pluralistic Stage - You will likely find yourself one of the authors of the Postmodern Bible, an example of interpreting Jesus Christ and the Christ-experience through the lens of "green stage" development.

Integral Stage - For Gebser this was one stage, but Integral Theory sees this as the opening to at least four higher structure-stages of development, any of which will insist on integrating its experience of Christ-consciousness with other expressions of the Holy Spirit around the world, and if so in your case you might also be interested in Integral Theory. (Frankly, any earlier/lower stages of development would simply not find this topic interesting. But if we do pat ourselves on the back, let it still be with humility: whatever stage we might be at, there are always higher stages; and somewhere, someplace, in some universe or dimension, somebody is writing a text that is over our heads. . . )

So, the same state, experienced the same way, can be interpreted in a variety of different ways in the same religion. Heck, often in the same church! Add to this the fact that the inner "I", the part of us that experiences the phenomenon, is unaware of these structure/levels (which leads to all sorts of problems), coupled with the fact that we are inconsistent in how we define terms, and we get all kinds of mis-communication and grief.

Wilber also claims that people functioning in earlier/lower stages can not see the higher/later stages, so the more complex stages are dismissed as inaccurate etc. What Wilber means is that someone can conceptually understand the higher levels, but they cannot tell you what is like to have a first-person experience in those levels. So, a person at a lower level and a person at a higher level may share the exact same experience and interpret them completely differently.

For example, someone who is interpreting life and experience in Mythic/Blue will always view the world in "black and white". There is only one "right way" to think about anything. They will see life as rule based and will function bound by laws and regulations. Violating these rules gets you booted out of the "club". So for instance, when a person functioning in a Mythic awareness dialogues with a person in Pluralistic/Green (who sees many points of view), the Mythic Blue person will judge and ostracize the Pluralistic/Green because he/she simply cannot see that worldview and therefore completely discounts it as rubbish. Sound familiar to anyone?

In conclusion, I think these Stages of Awareness matter when it comes to spirituality. We can only act on what we are aware of. If being conscious of these Stages helps me to interpret my personal experience and life more accurately, and communicate with people better (at least understand where they are coming from, sometimes real communication just won't happen), then I consider it helpful. In addition, I think there a lot of other questions that may be answered:

What are the implications for church?

Do you think people at a particular stage tend to gravitate towards the same church? Does this explain the concept of "liberal" and "conservative" churches?

Can you think of people you know that gravitate toward a particular stage?

What are the implications in communication? Do particular stages use different vocabulary? Maybe even expanded vocabulary as each stage is open to expanded "I, We and Its"? Does this explain why when we talk about religion and spirituality we often wind up in disagreements and misunderstandings?

Inaugural Thought

I guess I am a little jaded by all the political hoopla. In the words of Ben Harper in "Black Rain" I think the spin doctors have been "Selling false hope like some new dope we're addicted to."

I think there is a reason that young people are motivated by Barak Obama though, and it is really the only thing that I "hope" for. I hope we have a president that understands and experiences the world in a different way.

I would guess we are moving from a president who thought and experienced the world in Red/Blue to a president that thinks and experiences the world in Orange/Green. I think that's really what the election boiled down to also.

That would mean we have a leader that is moving towards a level of greater complexity, creativity, concern and care. That is something to "hope" for.

For further reading from someone much more astute than I.

"How can the same leader ask Reverend Warren to provide an inaugural invocation; seek an unprecedented Keynesian stimulus package; seek to further socialize health care; have a private dinner with leading conservative intellectuals; and consider how to rein in devastating and unrealistic long-term social security and Medicare liabilities? How, indeed. Embodying an integral view of the world, by definition, means seeking to integrate, to fully include everyone under the umbrella while also transcending the narrowness and partiality of each. (This, incidentally, is why every group that looks at Obama claims him as “one of them.” This is the ultimate litmus test of an integral leader.) A great leader is one whose sense of self is not threatened by a vigorous war of ideas, and an integral leader is one who wages the war from a worldview of love and abundance."

States of Consciousness

Before I get into how the stages work in real life I'd like to share a little about states of consciousness. Then I'll link both together and look at how all this effects our interpretation and experience of Jesus.

When I was a youth leader in El Paso (Hi Val!) we took our college age kids to a WorshipTogether Conference. On the last morning David Crowder was to lead about 30 minutes of worship and then we would go to some classes. The place was filled with a couple of thousand worship leaders ready to enter in to the "heavenly realm". At the end of the worship set Crowder's band began to drop out one by one and then with only Crowder left onstage he slowly and quietly left the stage. This huge place was completely silent. Not just for a minute, but for many minutes, and then someone in the audience began to sing a hymn and the couple thousand people joined in. The conference leaders began to look at each other, and then someone began to sing another hymn. Then everyone erupted in applause to the Creator. It was exactly 9:00am and time to go to class. We found out after the fact that the leaders were worried the spontaneous singing would go on forever with a couple thousand worship leaders in the house. But it ended just when it should of....as if God had orchestrated the whole thing.

I had an extremely intense experience during this worship time. I had no idea that David Crowder and his band had walked off the stage. My eyes were closed and I was experiencing an intense inner state of consciousness. My whole self seemed filled with light. There was abundance of overflowing peace and joy. Tears were flowing down my cheeks. I felt "undone". I had experienced similar things before, usually during worship times, in fact I think the goal of worship really was trying to provide a context for helping others reach this state. Bottom line. I had a very deep, intense "spiritual" experience with very little context with which to understand it. So, I went on living life as I normally did at the time. IMO, it just is not something that fundamentalist Christianity values (and a few denominations seem to give lip service, but no practical teaching).

When I started reading about Buddhism and stumbled across Integral Theory I had very little exposure to anything regarding States of Consciousness. In fact, as a fundamentalist Christian it was strongly encouraged not to do things like meditate, which could open you to the "influences of the devil". Eventually, I did begin to experiment with Lectio Divina and contemplative prayer, but there was no "we" to support it. Let's just say it would be a stretch to say these were common practices in my strain of Christianity.

Wilber, using his experience with deep meditative states and knowledge of Buddhism claims there are three natural states of consciousness EVERY human experiences (yes, even fundamentalist Christians): waking, dreaming and deep formless sleep. I had never given these three states much thought in my Christian experience. They were just part of life and taken for granted.

There are five meditative/contemplative states: gross, subtle witnessing, causal and non-dual. Here are some general definitions.

Gross/Waking States - what I experience riding a bike, writing or reading this post, exercising etc.

Subtle/Dream States - such as I might experience in a vivid dream, daydream or visualization exercise, as well as in certain types of meditation.

Causal/Formless States - such as deep, dreamless sleep and types of formless meditation and experiences of vast openness or emptiness.

Witnessing States - which is a capacity to witness all other states; for unbroken attention in the waking states and capacity for lucid dreams.

Non-dualism - ever-present awareness which is not so much a state as an ever-present ground of all states (and can be experienced as such).

If you are a conservative Christian, you might be thinking I've gone off the deep end, and you might be right, but that's another story. The fact is that Christian mystics have explored these states too. Here are some examples: St. Teresa's Interior Castles, the cartographies of St. John of the cross, the Early Church Fathers such as St. Gregory of Nyssa, Origen, and St. Dionysius.

In fact, check out St. Dionysius whose "way of purification, way of illumination, and way of unification" is as short and succinct a summary as you will find: purify the body via discipline and still the gross mind via concentration; find subtle interior illumination; surrender even illumination in a prayer of quietude and divine ignorance; thereby the soul and God find union in Godhead, on with the radiant All. However, if you are open to what other religions have to say, Buddhism has a rich 2000 year history in exploring these states of consciousness.

Some interesting points about these states:

• Natural states do not show development. Meditative/Contemplative states can be trained and do show devlopment.
  

• I can have peak experiences of states. In other words, I can get a peak into the next higher state without having permanant access to it, which may explain my experience above. Please note that I CANNOT skip stages or have peak experiences in stages, only states.

• These states are available at any stage. This is perhaps one of the most interesting point because each experienced state will be interpreted according the stage one is functioning in.

I promise to tie all of this in to our experience and interpretations of Jesus in the next post. Looking forward to what you guys think about these states though. Have you experienced them? Do they explain any of your experience? Have you ever experimented? Does your flavor of Christianity encourage or discourage these states? Do you think they are helpful in your spiritual journey? Are there dangers?

Stages of Awareness

In this article, "Levels of Devils, Gradations of God" Stuart Davis examines why worldview and how we experience the world matters as it relates to world leaders. Lots of fodder for further discussion, but I'd like to focus on a particular part of his post.

Humans develop. Developmental studies have shown that all humans seem to progress through similar levels of expanding care, concern and complexity. These developments take place in all of the quadrants (the singular and plural of the inside and outside) and are documented by many different disciplines. These changes take place physically, socially, psychologically, cognitively, psychosexually (yeah baby!), relationally etc. The interesting thing is that each of these stages "transcends and includes" the previous stage.

Let me briefly switch topics briefly from the "I" to the "It" to explain. Matter is composed of atoms which are whole in and of themselves. Molecules transcend and include Atoms. Molecules cannot exist without atoms, but they are also something completely different from atoms. Cells transcend and include molecules. Organs transcend and include cells and so on....(this is the concept of a Holon. Simultaneously, a whole, and part of a whole).

Individuals and societies go through real developmental stages that also transcend and include the previous stage. For instance, Gebser's Structures of Consciousness is taking snapshots of stages of the development of consciousness. By the way, this would be like looking at the "I" from a 3rd-person point of view. Which means you cannot see these structures from a 1st-person point of view. In other words, one can pray and meditate all day and not be aware of these levels of development. Here is a brief summary of combination of Gebser's structures and Spiral Dynamics. Please note that many other studies show very similar patterns of evolution.

Archaic/Beige - Do what you must to stay alive. Instincts and habits used to survive. "Deep, dreamless, sleep". Distinct self is barely awakened.

Magic/Purple - Keep the spirits happy and the tribe warm and safe. Language, unitary world, any event can be substituted for any other, Preserves sacred objects, places and events. Rites of passage, seasonal cycles and tribal customs.

Red - World viewed as a dangerous place. Be what you are and do what you want. Distinguish ourselves from the natural environment. Enjoys self to the fullest without guilt or remorse. Conquers, outfoxes and dominates others.

Mythic/Blue - Life has meaning, directions and purpose. Sacrifice of self to a transcendent cause, truth or righteous pathway. Order enforces code of conduct based on absolute principles. Impulses controlled through guilt. Laws, regulations and discipline build moral fiber.

Rational/Orange - Act in your own self-interest by playing the game to win. Change and advancement are inherent in the scheme of things. Progress by seeking out nature's secrets. Manipulates earth's resources to create and spread abundant life. Optimistic, risk-taking people deserve success. Societies prosper through strategy, technology and competitiveness.

Pluralistic/Green - Seek peace within the inner self and explore, with others, the caring dimensions of community. The human spirit must be freed from greed, dogma and divisiveness. Sensitivity supersedes cold rationality. Spreads the earths resources and opportunities among all. Reconciliation and consensus. Spirituality harmony, and human development.

Integral/Yellow - Experience the wholeness of existence through mind and spirit. The whole world is a single dynamic organism with its own collective mind. Self is both distinct and a blended part of a larger compassionate whole. Everything connects to everything else in ecological alignments. Energy and information permeate the Earth's total environment.

There's so much to say about how these structures are relevant. Society and individual consciousness both seem to go through these structures. Keep in mind they are hierarchical, and not predetermined. Gebser calls them mutations and not part of evolution. So, what comes next is always a mystery, but each structure transcends and includes the previous. So, we still have residue from the older structures in our subconscious, if not conscious.

I'll link these to spiritualityin general, and Christianity in particular, and note why I think this stuff matters with an example from Ken Wilber.

If you are interested I found this article after I got done with this post. It describes the structures in more detail. THIS is interactive integral stuff. Cool resource.

Stuart Davis - Nothing In Between

Beautiful, poignant, creative.

The "I"," We" and "It" of Life

I've made to many uninformed decisions in my life. The tough thing about life is that you can only make decisions based on the information in your awareness. So, I've made decisions based on less than the all of the information available. Sometimes things workout, and sometimes they don't. Either way I learn, grow, change, evolve. . . But at the time that I made the less than informed decision, it was based on my understanding of what was true.

Just about every language on our earth has a form of the pronouns I, We and It. Those pronouns represent the different ways we look at life, and more importantly, truth. Let me roll through an example to make it clear (at least as clear as my limited intellect is capable).

If I want to describe myself I can do so from a variety of perspectives. Science/Modernity would view me as an "it". I can be reduced to a bag of skin hanging around muscles and bone. I could be reduced to a cellular level. A scientists could pop the brain out of my head and say "See, this is Roger." But it would only be partially true. I am more than the sum of my physical parts, although my physical parts are certainly necessary.

I can also describe myself from a 2nd-Person perspective; the "we". Postmodernity has pointed out that we are inexorably connected and influenced by our culture and language, and our perception of truth is as well. We are limited by our language and our culture in ways that are difficult to grasp if we are not aware of them. Needless to say I am more than my culture and language, though they are needed to fully describe who I am.

Last, I am a 1st-person, "I". This is the realm of phenemonology and religion. This is how I experience life. I could describe to you how I feel, what I think, what I see, how something tastes. But, these experiences are not all there is to me. The pre-modern, pre-rational religions dug deep into the "I" (especially Hindu and Buddhist traditions, but there are some interesting Christian Mystics who were on the same path).

These different understandings of truth unfolded in history in a sequential pattern. The various spiritual traditions were born out of a pre-modern, pre-rational worldview. They had almost no knowledge of science and culture, but they were masters at phenomenology and left lots of information for us to assimilate. They attempted to build an understanding of the universe based on their inner, 1st-person experiences.

The pre-modern, pre-rational world gave way to the Modern/Rational. The Enlightenment gave us scientific methods and for all the great advances in science, medicine and technology it raped the world of religion and phenomenology because it could not be measured or quantified. From it's perspective 3rd-person perspective of truth, spirituality and religion was B.S.

In the last few decades postmodernity has shown that the truth claims of both premodernity and postmodernity were outright influenced by the language and culture of the person. All of truth was reduced to culture and therefore there could be no one, universal truth.

Integral Theory says that all of these truth claims have a place at the table. Each discipline or science is merely looking at reality from a different perspective. Religion/Phenomenology looks at the 1st-person/"I". Hermenuetics looks at the 2nd-person/"we". Science looks at the 3rd-person/"it".

In conclusion, (mainly because I'm tired of typing) these three perspectives of truth must be considered together for us to get an accurate view of reality. It has really helped me to put the "truths" that each of these worldviews and their corresponding disciplines give in an appropriate place. The mystic religious traditions have their place along side modern science. The radical pluralism of postmodernity makes me aware of my cultural influences that help me form the ideas of what is "true". Perhaps, if I take into account all three of these perspectives, I will have a more accurate view of reality.

Now the really interesting stuff comes when you lay all of these truth claims out and attempt to harmonize them. Patterns emerge. Stages and states in each one of the quadrants unfold, and it appears that humans, along with the universe and our earth, are evolving.

Happy New Year

You know...if time really matters to you....

YEASAYER - 2080

I can't sleep when I think about the times we're living in,
I can't sleep when I think about the future I was born into,
Outsiders dressed up like Sunday morning,
With no Berlin wall what the hell you gonna do.

It's a New Year,
I'm glad to be here
It's a fresh spring,
So let's sing.

In 2080
I'll surely be dead
So don't look ahead,
Never look ahead

It's a New Year,
I'm glad to be here
It's the first spring,
So let's sing.

And the moon shines bright
On the water tonight
So we won't drown
In the summer sound.

If you find me I'll be sitting by the water fountain,
Picket signs, letdowns, meltdown it's Monday morning
But it's alright, it's alright, it's alright, it's alright
It's alright,
Cause in no time, They'll be gone I guess I'll still be standing here.

Yeah Yeah we can all grab at the chance and be handsome farmers,
Yeah you can have twenty one sons and be blood when they marry my daughters,
And the pain that we left at the station will stay in a jar behind us.
We can pickle the pain into blue ribbon winners at county contests.

Spirituality That Transforms

One of my main critiques of religion has centered on the idea of transformation. My opinion has been that if a religion does not aid in transformation it is impotent. If religion is authentic it should provide results. I’ve been doing research on Integral Theory, which I blogged briefly about in an earlier post. I recently came across this article by Ken Wilber entitled “A Spirituality That Transforms”, that explains a lot of what I have experienced, in and out of organized religion, and why authentic transformation is so rare.

First, Wilber lays out the case that there are two basic functions of religion:

1. Translation – A way of creating meaning for the self that is viewed as horizontal. These are usually new ways to think or feel about reality, a new idea, belief, language or paradigm.
2. Transformation – Radical transformation at the deepest seat of consciousness. Viewed as vertical. The very process of translation itself is challenged, and the self is inquired into, ultimately ending in the “death of the self”.
   

Wilber says that translation is the most prevalent function of religion. It is a way of trying to understand and translate the uncertainty, suffering and apparent futility of life, while transformation is the product of the "death of self".

If I was my old “Institutionalized Church Self”, I would pick apart the definitions and toss this stuff casually on the trash heap. But, it just explains too much of my experience. I’ve experienced transformation. And I guess I continue to experience it. I beat my head against the wall trying to help others experience it in an organized setting. I’ve been pissed off, outraged, angry, hurt, disillusioned, sad etc. because I just couldn’t understand why the typical church (leaders and members) wanted nothing to do with transformation. So, I left organized religion and continued transforming (and I'm no longer pissed off, outraged, angry, hurt, disillusioned, sad etc) .

Generally, institutional church leadership doesn’t want to deal with transformation. It is often times an ugly, uncertain, messy process when one dies to one’s self. It may entail deep soul searching similar to psychoanalysis to peal away the layers of the onion that is the ego, not to mention being open to eastern spiritual disciplines. Additionally, in my experience, I’ve found transformation to be realized by individuals and not usually by large groups (unless those who are experiencing transformation decide to meet together). Could it be that church leadership is scared of authentic transformation? Not only can it be messy, but transformation by necessity challenges the status quo because it challenges translation itself.

Quite honestly, most of the church leaders I’ve worked with simply didn’t have time to deal with it even if they wanted to, and because the church leaders appear content with translation, so do the masses. Wilber says, transformation “does not render the self content, it renders it undone.”
Wilber lays out the case that very few people undergo any type of radical transformation and that leaves the masses involved in “at best, various types of horizontal, translative, merely legitimate religion: they were involved in magical practices, mythical beliefs, egoic petitionary prayer, magical rituals, and so on.” I’d add that translation is far easier to deal with on a corporate level. It can be preached from the pulpit or taught in Sunday school and requires very little personal interaction. Further, it is fairly easy to control because it is primarily informational. Unfortunately, by itself, it does nothing more than shore up the ego.

Wilber’s solution to this problem? It’s integral. Surprised? Offer authentic and radical transformation with “an approach that honors and incorporates many lesser transformative and translative practices--covering the physical, emotional, mental, cultural, and communal aspects of the human being--in preparation for, and as an expression of, the ultimate transformation into the always already present state.” Religion, in its best forms, can provide the social framework for people to experience transformation. Transformation is eros/upward/expansive, the church is agape/horizontal/caring. Instead of churches full of people with ideas in their minds, we would have pews filled with people consciously experiencing God in their ever day life.

“Thus, the authentic spiritual camps have the heart and soul of the great transformative traditions, and yet they will always do two things at once: appreciate and engage the lesser and translative practices (upon which their own successes usually depend), but also issue a thundering shout from the heart that translation alone is not enough.” I think this points to what I’ve done in my institutional church experience, and what I continue to do here. Sometimes with more or less tact, grace and loving-kindness.

There are some more interesting insights in this article. Maybe I will touch on those later. . .

Death Wish

Awhile back I was walking with my daughter in the park behind our house. I live in the 'burbs and having a little oasis so close is nice. Anyway, it was a beautiful morning at a place I visit often when I want to get "centered". We were silent, just observing and I said, " You know, when I die why don't you scatter my ashes here." She thought I was being morbid, as most people do when you discuss death, but I assured her that someday I would die. It's not a big deal. Whatever is born, must die.

What is your death wish? Does it matter to you how your remains are disposed of?

Here is a quote and a song that describes my feelings:

"Everything in nature gives in its death; stars die and whole solar systems begin to evolve from the impregnation of the exploded stellar matter. Trees die, and from their wood human beings build homes and furniture, statues and Stradivariuses. If humans died in a healthy culture, they would not lock out the earth in metal coffins and carve their names on stone monuments, but would instead place the naked body in the earth and plant a tree above the silent heart."

-William Irwin Thompson

Holy Holons!

So, part of my journey has been exploring other faiths, philosophies and practices. To be honest it is overwhelming! I wish I was Neo with a port in my head so I could download all of the things I find interesting and truthful!

Some of my loose criteria have been:

• A religion/philosophy/practice should show results.

• A proper worldview should not have to discount science to believe in religion or vice verse.

• The things that all religions have in common are likely pointing toward God/ultimate truth.
  

• Is it able to make sense of both outer physical realities and inner spiritual experiences?

• Does it provide a truthful view of reality? Not all religions and philosophies are created equal.

In my ramblings I stumbled across Ken Wilber and his Integral Theory. It took me a while to understand the jargon, but being a determined person when it suits my fancy, I plodded through. I've come to find some very interesting and useful ways to view the cosmos, philosophy, religion and spiritual practices that fulfill most of the above criteria. It is a little "heady" to understand at first, but ultimately comes back personal practice.

There is no way to adequately explain it in this forum and with my limited intellect. Here are some resources for those interested. I'll be picking a few topics that I've found particularly interesting or helpful.

Introduction to Integral Theory and Practice

An Integral Age at the Leading Edge

Spirituality and the 3 Strands of Deep Science

A Spirituality That Transforms

Religious, But Not Spiritual (Father Thomas Keating)

The Future of Christianity

No. I am not presumptuous enough to think I know the future of Christianity. But, these are two guys I respect and I do think that Integral Theory could prove useful to contemporary Christianity. Looks interesting...

Already?

I made my election prediction here.

The guy isn't even in office yet! So, this is probably just the start....

Death, Silence, Beauty

I apologize for my silence here. No, actually I don't.

I've been covering a coworkers vacation and working 3rd Shift. We got a new dog (partially against my better judgment, but hey, I'm a softy). Trish's Grandma moved on from this world, and Trish is in SLC for the funeral. Life is just generally....busy and beautiful.

Some random thoughts and ruminating from my distorted perspective on life and spirituality:

• Ken Wilber's Integral Theory is perhaps the most complete explanation of how I believe our universe works. I didn't know much about it, but it is a harmonization of science and spirituality that allows each its place. I'll be posting more later.

• Teens and pre-teens can be completely different people from one day to the next, heck from one minute to the next. What happened to my sweet little kids?

• Was Jesus a non-dualist?

• Brand new Christmas lights will still wait until the tree is completely decorated for half of the strand to go out. I suspect they have some sort of intelligence.

In Memory of Maggie

Our family dog suddenly moved on to the next realm of existence yesterday. It's been couple days of dealing with grief, digging holes, and thinking about the impermanence of life. Here's a few observations:

Life is ultimately unsatisfactory.

Death is so quick, casual and non-discriminate that it leads me to believe there is something on the other side, though I don't have enough information to know what it is with certainty.

It broke my heart to have to carry the carcass of a being that was once fully alive.

I don't grieve for the being that has died, but for myself.

Time is short. Nothing is certain. Love hard. Love Deep. Love as long as you have breath.

Dedication to Reality

Some would call my spiritual quest foolish, heretical, dangerousw ... I would say that it is merely a dedication to reality and the truth. I am rereading The Road Less Traveled and I wanted to touch on the chapter on Discipline.

Peck says the our view of reality is like a map. They lie somewhere on a continuum of true and accurate to delusional and false. The better map we have, the better choices we make, the more we are able to experience peace, hope and love. So, get a good map, have a good life.

The problem is that we are not born with maps. We have to make them and that requires effort. Dang it. There is always a monkey wrench, isn't there ....? And to make things worse, reality is not static, it is always changing. So, we must continually revise our maps. Double dang it. (Can you tell I tend toward laziness?)

Many people stop revising their map at some point in their lives. I am blessed/cursed to not be one of those people. Why do people stop revising their maps? Pain.

It is painful to revise our maps, it entails "letting go". We must let go of our old beliefs, attachments, theories, questions that have become so comfortable. In fact, we may even view them as our "self". None of us wants our "self" to die, but if we are going to have more accurate maps, die it must. Some people are not willing to suffer, so they stop revising.

"...we must continually revise our maps, and sometimes when enough new information has accumulated, we must make very major revisions. The process of making revisions, particularly major revisions, is painful and sometimes excruciatingly painful. And herein lies the major source of many of the ills of mankind."

Peck says that some will actively or passively ignore the new information in order to preserve their comfort and avoid suffering.

"We may denounce information as false, dangerous, heretical, the work of the devil. We may actually crusade against it and even attempt to manipulate the world so as to make it conform to our view of reality. Rather than to try change the map, an individual may try to destroy the new reality. Sadly, such a person may expend much more energy ultimately in defending an outmoded view of the world than would have been required to revise and correct it in the first place."

I've burned a few maps in the past couple of years. There is suffering involved. In fact, later in the book Peck says that depression is a form of "letting go". Been through that too...but there are new maps. New places to see, new information to learn, new experiences to be had, new people to interact with....

Go make a map!

Whipping Post Nirvana

I'll follow up with some more on True Freedom when I have a chance. . . I love the dialogue! Thanks for participating....

Music is big part of my life, and I don't talk much about it here, but that's going to change. . .

May I just say that under the right conditions that "Whipping Post" from The Allman Brothers Band live album "At Fillmore East" may be considered a spiritual experience. 22 minutes and 44 seconds of heaven.

This is not the album version, but you'll get the flava of some down-home hippie jam band music!

True Freedom

I've come to some conclusions and started asking other questions in my quest. For those who may not know me, these comment come from someone who was very involved in institutional Christianity and has chosen to compare the religion I was raised with to others in an open-minded fashion. These are the semi-scientific, horrifically random thoughts and experiences, nothing more.... It's okay to not agree.

Can you say you are free when things, or people make you angry, miserable, or irritated?

Can you say you are free when situations make you depressed?

Can you say you are free when you crave, desire and obsess about what you do not have?

I spent a large part of my adult life being told Jesus had set me free. Yet, in institutional religion I experienced very little actual freedom. I wonder if institutional religion has a right definition of freedom (that could be debated), but it's ecclesiastical structures (Catholic or Protestant), and it's practical theology, cause their attendees to substitute rules, obligations and trust in hierarchy for true freedom?

True freedom is in the mind. As long as we are a slave to our anxieties and fears, as long as we allow ourselves to be manipulated by people and objects of power, as long as we are afraid in any way to question the structures and people we give authority to, as long as we are unaware that these subtle and not-so-subtle manipulations take place, we are a slave.

Jesus said, "The thief does not come except to steal and to kill and to destroy. I have come so that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." Joh 10:10

May I just say, that I have found VERY FEW EXAMPLES of anyone in institutional Christianity that I would consider a good example of this verse.

For all of the crusades and preaching, for all of the Sacraments partaken, for all of the hymns sung, for all of the money spent, Christians, as a whole, do not seem to be morally or spiritually superior to adherents of any other religion, or people of no religion at all. In fact, they appear to be far less spiritually advanced then adherents to other religions depending on the criteria (Buddhism or Jainism comes to mind). I have to ask myself why?

Why is it that the people that have accepted the freedom of Christ choose to live in such small ideological boxes? Why is that any criticism of a denomination, or a particular religion is met with such hateful resistance from people that should be full of peace, joy and love? If, after all, they have a benefit that Non-Christians don't have: the One True God living inside of them.

I have to conclude that:

1. Either the forms of Western Christianity that I've been exposed to simply are inadequate to help people live in true freedom.

2. The concept of "Christ within" is simply false. After all if Christ really lived within His people, should not at least a majority of the members live freely, with joy, peace and love?

3. Perhaps Western Christianity has completely misunderstood what Jesus was talking about and has evolved into something it was never intended to be.

4. All of the above?

5. Other reasons I have mentioned. Feel free to enlighten me....

Paul said, "Christ has set us free so that we may enjoy the benefits of freedom. So keep on standing firm in it, and stop attaching yourselves to the yoke of slavery again." Gal 5:1

What are the benefits? What does it mean to stand firm in freedom? What is the yoke of slavery that people are ATTACHING themselves to? I can say that this verse means something entirely different to me now then it did when I was immersed in institutional Christianity.

Why would people who have been granted FREEDOM by God allow themselves to be slaves to religious concepts, hierarchies and habits? In my personal experience it is a multifaceted answer. I was ignorant. I was lazy. I was deluded. I lacked a concept of personal responsibility for my own spiritual life. I wanted the easy way out. I was willing to let the pastor, priest, tradition, community tell me what was best for me spiritually, whether or not it actually worked for me. I put all my eggs in my tradition's "spiritual basket" and then defended it to the hilt when someone questions it. When I was confronted by the kind of people like me, who ask the hard questions, I either got angry, or blew them off as people who were lost, or did not understand. I did these things because I had self-identified myself with that particular tradition. I was a slave to a concept that existed only in my mind.

So, what is true freedom and are there beliefs or practices that help us attain it? Or, do we already have it and are deluded into thinking we are not free? Is freedom in the mind or external? I don't know....maybe I'll post more later....

Religion - Missing the Point

The Catholic "religious leaders", being placed in positions of moral authority by their flock, now have the audacity to tell people how they should vote. Not only that, but threaten them with hell if they voted for the wrong person!!! Article here.

The priest said that Catholic's vote for Obama was "material cooperation with intrinsic evil". Ugh, and raping little boys is only deserving of priests going to retirement homes for the rest of their Catholic service?

Please don't get me wrong. I am not anti-Catholic. But I do think that just about all of Western, organized Christianity has become completely irrelevant. It is unable to do the thing that our world needs most" help people on the spiritual journey of life. This is just another adventure in religion missing the point.

Religious people give all kinds of authority to the people they see as "leaders". Then the leaders have the obligation to tell, persuade, cajole, threaten, guilt etc. to get the "flock" to do what the leaders think is right. It happens all the time, in just about every form of organized religion, but it has reached idiotic heights in western Christianity.

Perhaps we should quit placing ourselves under the authority of "leaders", and learn to trust ourselves when it comes to spirituality.

The Beer of Life

Not that I need another reason to drink beer, but. . .

However it is a little disconcerting that even beer is getting genetically modified. IS NOTHING SACRED!!!!